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Friday, July 3, 2015

My Rome Wedding

Photo by Simone Checcheti

After a love affair with the city of Rome for over a decade, the city provided the optimal location for my wedding. Rome lived up to its expectation of being a bureaucratic and customer service nightmare; but after a year of planning, several months preparing document after document, and innumerable hours waiting in offices, the event served as a reminder of just how much I love this place, even when I am determined to hate it.

For anyone from abroad getting married in Italy, be prepared to compile a long list of documents and spend more time waiting in offices than what will amount to your wedding day. You will be required to make several trips to the Embassy, local legal offices and the tribunal with witnesses in tow. Each office will tell you something different.

Then there were the traumatic episodes in dress boutiques around the Italian capital after which I ended up getting my wedding gown at an Umbrian monastery.

One of the biggest challenges I consistently found during the planning and filing of my paperwork is what I believe will plague the rest of my life in Italy: the predicament of the birthplace. Italian officials seem unqualified to read American passports. I repeatedly had to explain why my birth certificate reads "Buffalo" and my passport reads "New York, USA". That New York is a state, in addition to being a city, and Buffalo is a city in that state. Several clerks refused to accept this and process my documents.

If you do not plan to have a Catholic wedding, you are required to go to the City Hall for a 10 minute ceremony administered by the mayor or a representative of his. To book this hall, you must go 6 months in advance and wait in line for hours to make your request. But the documents a foreigner is required to put together are valid only for 6 months. There is high demand for this hall, because it is one of only 3 locations where a non-Catholic wedding can be legally performed. As part of the Lateran Pact signed by Mussolini, Catholic weddings count legally for state weddings. Any other religious denomination or civil wedding must be performed at the city hall.

On the day of the ceremony, when I exited the "sala rossa" of the city hall entering Michelangelo's piazza atop the Capitol Hill, home to Rome's oldest settlement dating back to the 13th Century B.C., I felt privileged. To have celebrated such a significant life event in a place of such historic significance, all the administrative drama was more than worth it. With 20 of my closest family and friends at my side, I had views of the entire city of Rome, its eclectic blend of buildings testifying to an eternal presence, and its beautiful church tops and ruins and every glance.

It is a medieval tradition that citizens getting married in Rome must publish their names in front of the city hall building for 7 days allowing for anyone to protest your union. Thankfully this is now accomplished online.

Our reception was held in a medieval castle about 15 miles outside Rome. Despite some disorganization Castello di Lunghezza was the perfect location for a winter wedding. The staff had forgotten we made several visits and booked the hall 9 months earlier, and later told me when I made the appointment to pay the deposit 3 months beforehand that it would be under reconstruction all winter. Such archaic organizational methods I suppose are to be expected for an authentically historic and romantic setting. The castle was built in the 8th century and became property of the Papacy in the 13th Century. Our non-denominational Christian ceremony was officiated by my dear friend Rev. Tanya Halkyard, ironically in the Pope's former private chapel.

The dinner was catered by Angelucci catering who were incredibly efficient in preparing an elaborate 4 course dinner for over 100 people in a kitchen the size of my bedroom, and scurrying through

narrow hallways and doorways of the castle providing excellent service.

It was a challenge finding a balance between American wedding traditions of dancing and speeches and the Italian tradition of eating and more eating. We had a lot of all of the above. With Andrea Loco on DJ, we turned the stone walls and wooden ceiling of the castle into a soiree, burning off our many calories earned from a large buffet of prosciutto, porchetta and an array of fresh and aged cheeses, a seated dinner of 2 first courses and 2 second courses and a room reserved for dessert with all my Italian favorites...fried dough, freshly filled cannoli, tiramisu and Mont Blanc wedding cake.

I am happy to share with you our wedding announcement published in the Buffalo News, highlighting the tremendous and generous efforts of friends and strangers of my hometown that helped in the un-romantic but very Roman process of planning my wedding in Rome.

2 comments:

My family and I just returned from Rome and had the pleasure of booking Theresa's 3 hour tour of Ancient Rome. Her knowledge of the history of Rome, the debates about the history and packing a number of sites into 3 hours was great. As fellow WNY'ers we had seen the article in the Buffalo News and made arrangements via email. It was also neat to get her modern day perspective on many aspects of Rome. Fun little stops to Gelatto shops and a bar for a aperol spritz. We'd highly recommend Theresa for any of her tours

Home-cooked typical Italian dinner made up of severalcourses from archival family recipes accompanied with a cooking demonstration in “Mamma’s Casa”, the kitchen of a Roman family located in the affluent residentialneighborhood of Parioli.

Taste Trastevere

Explore the tastes of Trastevere and Campo di Fiori finished with an annotated lunch or dinner in one of Rome's most historic Slow Food restaurants.

at the Villa GiuliaVilla Giulia National EtruscanMuseum, housed in a Renaissance Villa with thousands of Etruscan materialssuch as bronzes and pottery, as well sarcophagi and tomb re-installments with fine fresco paintings.

Borghese GalleryThe best of Italian 17th Century masterpieces includingCaravaggio and Bernini, hundreds of antiquities, aBaroque palace, and a grande public park

Traveling with a private driver, journey 30 miles north of Rome to the Bandidaccia necropolis in the city of Cerveteri, the largest burial site in the Mediterranean. Tour an extensive collection of unique tombs modeled on and decorated as domestic architecture lined along routes designed as a city plan. Include also the option to dine along the seaside in a Renaissance palace La Posta Vecchia, built on top of the Etruscan port.

Rome's St. John Lateran Cathedral In-Depth

Discover the art and relics of Rome's official cathedral, seat of the Bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope! Tour covers impressive artworks of the church's interior, the former Papal residences now home to a Vatican History Museum, the Lateran Baptistry, and the famous "Holy Steps" believed to be those the Jesus ascended to meet his fate in Jerusalem.

Wine excursion-Tuscany

Journey by car a couple of hours outside the bustle of Rome into the landscape of Tuscany. Witness rolling hills, manicured vineyards and stop for wine tastings and cultural visits in a couple picturesque Medieval Tuscan cities, such as San Gimignano and Siena.

Villas of Tivoli

Journey 20 miles outside Rome with a private driver and discover 2 of most spectacular and well maintained villas from the Renaissance and antiquity. First tour the beautifully manicured Renaissance gardens of Villa D'Este and saunter down the lane of 100 fountains. Then visit hundreds of acres of Hadrian's Villa meant to be the emperor's refuge from the bustle of Rome that now serves as yours while you get lost in a series of ruins of bath complexes, temples, and residences.

Scavenger Hunt for kids-"Safari d'Arte"

Designed for curious elementary aged kids, covering several different itineraries including main city highlights, while participating in an interactive scavenger hunt searching for clues at each main attraction with book and map in hand.

*Please also consider private transportation with these tours as well as airport and cruise ship transports, both of which can be arranged with professional drivers.

*Also consider any customized tour you can imagine focusing on the specifics of Ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque Rome.